Rousseau explored a wide variety of techniques in the first decade of his activity as a landscape painter, from 1826 until 1836, and he often depicted seemingly unremarkable prospects lacking recognizable landmarks, an inclination that ran counter to conventional notions of the picturesque. These factors make it challenging to trace his early artistic development and to locate his views. But they galvanize focused attention on his considerable creative resources, which enabled him to achieve a degree of compositional sophistication belied by typically humble subjects.
Characteristic of Rousseau’s early output is the manner in which he was able to create the illusion of an expansive view on a support of limited size. In this picture, scale is established by the trees in the foreground at the left, which anchor a diagonal foreground plane rendered in muted earth tones with thinned, almost ink-like paint indicating shadow. Successive planes radiate from the left, with the countryside opening up toward a distant row of poplars that all but screen off low hills at the horizon. A cluster of leaves silhouetted against the roof of a chapel, with brightly illuminated Gothic tracery just below them, offer the painting’s starkest contrast of light and dark as a focal point.
The origins of this painting are obscure. Pierre Miquel (1990) suggested it might be a morning view of the village and château of Broglie (Eure) painted about 1835, which was described by Alfred Sensier (1872, pp. 110–12) on the basis of a conversation with the artist many years later, but this contention is unsupportable. Despite differences of setting, the construction of this view is comparable to
A Village in a Valley (The Met
32.100.133), painted before Rousseau’s trip to the Auvergne in 1830. But the idiosyncratic handling of paint may be the result of greater confidence that points to a slightly later date. With its small scale and informal character derived from English landscape painting, this work could be classified as a study, yet its wood support and canny structure bespeak the ambition required of a finished picture, or
tableau. In overall effect,
An Old Chapel in a Valley anticipates Rousseau’s Salon entry for 1833,
View on the Outskirts of Granville (see fig. 1 above).
Asher Miller 2020